Two on Independent Contractors

This piece suggests that a part of the appeal of the recent victor in Iowa is his appeal to independent contractors.

“Make America Great Again” resonates. He relates to what the college-educated press calls “blue-collar workers”. However, those blue-collar workers aren’t what they used to be. Many of them own their businesses. They are self-directed and self-employed. They should be referred to as “independent contractors”.

Since he was in commercial real estate, [he] has worked extensively with these kinds of people. They are smart, though most didn’t go to college. Their unions have abandoned them.

These people all over the country have seen the government debt skyrocket no matter who is in charge. They have seen a two-tier legal system be implemented. They have seen Washington DC bureaucrats and politicians skim the cream and they get the dregs. It’s a mini-Hunger Game.

When you are working for yourself no matter if you are a hairdresser or a carpenter, you feel the sting of taxes. You see the rot in your neighborhood. You want everyone to do well and factory jobs to increase because it means people will be spending more on your services.

I've mostly been taxed as an independent contractor in my life, and I can therefore tell you that the government hates them. They are required to pay "both halves" of the FICA taxes that are the biggest tax of all, and as such their effective tax rate is much higher than they would be paying if they were categorized as employees. Yet there are signal advantages also: you can set your own hours, determine your own working conditions, and be free of the oversight of HR departments and other corporate disciplinarians who increasingly monitor your outside life and politics to keep you in line.

Not coincidentally, there is a strong push to eliminate the possibility of independence from left-leaning states like California -- and, therefore, from the Biden Administration as well. 

If the analysis I started with is accurate, this is -- coincidentally? -- an attack on the heart of the political support of their most feared and hated opponent. It's certainly got a political angle over and above the tax issue. Everyone's livelihood must depend on the approval of HR, which means everyone must be taught to behave in HR approve ways -- on and off the clock. Everyone must be monitored and taught not to say the wrong things. 

It's another public-private partnership, like the pre-Elon Twitter (and the still current Facebook) that made sure to censor and shadow-ban all the ideas the Establishment asked them to do. They even locked up the accounts of the New York Post, which was founded by Alexander Hamilton, to prevent it from reporting the disapproved Hunter Biden Laptop story in the hours before the 2020 election; and they took instructions, after that election, on things the administration would have liked kept down. That was all exposed after Elon in the "Twitter Files," but you'll only get the NPR-approved version of that story, which highlights the counterarguments instead of the story itself. NPR is another public-private partnership too, isn't it?